Firefox 10 for desktop and mobile launched

Yes, Firefox has reached double digits! Quite a lot sooner that a lot of us would have expected a few years ago; even harder to swallow is that Firefox 100 will be out in a mere decade!

While reaching double digits is an important milestone, this release is quite significant in the number of major changes that it brings to Firefox.

First and foremost is the major change is how Firefox Add-ons work. In previous versions of Firefox an add-on would only be installed if it was compatible with that version. This release onwards, Firefox will assume that the add-on is compatible by default. Due to the large number of beta, aurora and even nightly users of Firefox, there will be enough feedback about most popular add-ons. If any add-ons are known to not be working, their installation will be blocked for those upgrading to Firefox 10; others will find they are running a newer browser and all their add-ons are still there.

Some of the new upcoming Firefox developer tools that we talked about earlier have now landed. Firefox 10 includes a web inspector, similar to the one in FireBug. You could always view the source of a page in Firefox, however that only shows the source of the page as its sent to the browser, not the actual source of the page as it is in front of you. If you checked out our Firefox Tips and Tricks, you will know that this feature has been there in some form — but hidden away — since Firefox 4.

A style inspector has also been added, which allows one to view, edit and toggle CSS properties defined by the page. Another new feature for developers is the addition of a syntax highlighter in the Scratchpad code editor. It will also be used for future developer tools such as the Style Editor. Check out the following video showcasing these new features:

There have been updated to web standard support in Firefox as usual. In this release Firefox adds support for the fullscreen API, which lets developers show part of their web page / app in full screen. This can be used for not only video, but games, or even other HTML based apps, such as presentation slides as well.

CSS 3D transforms, a major CSS3 feature that allow — as suggested by the name — 3D transformations of web page elements. This is not WebGL, which is a richer way to allow any kind of 3D content, but a simple way for people to have basic 3D transforms applied to their text. If you are running Firefox 10 or a browser that supports CSS3 3D transforms, this text will appear rotated in 3D. The text will still be selectable.

In more standards updates, WebGL has added anti-aliasing, and the IndexedDB implementation has been updated to match the specification. In a minor but very visible UI change, the forward button of the browser is now hidden until there is actually some place to go forward to.

The mobile version features accelerated layers using OpenGL ES, and features sync improvements.